****************************************************************************** RELEASE NOTES FOR HEASOFT 6.0 April 12, 2005 ****************************************************************************** SUMMARY HEASOFT 6.0 is a software suite consisting of SWIFT 2.0, HEATOOLS 1.1, FTOOLS 6.0, FV 4.2, XIMAGE 4.3, XRONOS 5.22, XSPEC (version 12.2.0 and 11.3.2), and XSTAR 2.1kn3. This document contains notes about significant changes made since the last major release of each. All this software shares common build, installation and initialization procedures. Please see the file HEASOFT-INSTALL.TXT for details. Please see README.CYGWIN if you are planning to install in the Cygwin environment. New in HEASOFT 6.0 is the HEADAS build environment which replaces earlier versions of configuration files and Makefiles as used in HEASOFT 5.3.1. The build procedure remains basically the same however, i.e. modeled after a typical GNU software distribution. For each of the HEASOFT subpackages below are listed tools and/or features which are new in version 6.0. More information on any of these packages can be obtained using the fhelp utility. Type "fhelp ftools" to obtain a full listing of all the tools available, or "fhelp <sub-package-name>" to list all of the tools in a particular subpackage, e.g. "fhelp swift". Finally, type "fhelp <toolname>" for more detailed help on a particular tool. FV, XIMAGE, and XSPEC all have online help available from within the program. In addition, XIMAGE, XSPEC, and XSTAR have TeX formatted manuals. ****************************************************************************** XPI / PIL ****************************************************************************** - In the HEADAS framework, all new tools use PIL (the ISDC Parameter Interface Library) instead of XPI (which is still used by the older FTOOLS). New versions of all the parameter utilities (except for pquery), that is: pget plist pquery2 pset punlearn have been written using PIL, and are now the default versions you will find in your PATH after HEASOFT initialization. These new versions are intended to reproduce the behavior of the xpi versions, but by virtue of using PIL there will be some differences. If you find that you have a need for the older XPI utilities, you can still build them in the following way: after building HEASOFT, cd headas/ftools/xanlib/xpiutils and then "hmake xpitools" followed by "hmake xpitools-install". The xpitools will be named with an "xpi" prefix, e.g. "xpipget". ****************************************************************************** ASCA ****************************************************************************** - ascaarf: Fixed bug when accumulating the gis detector efficiency. Also, decreased run time on Linux. - ascascreen: Fixed problem with output format with some versions of Perl. - cleansis: Modified to work on event files from instruments other than the ASCA SIS. The behaviour with ASCA SIS event files is unchanged. For other missions, cleansis gets the number of chips using the TLMIN/MAX of the column specified by the chipcol parameter and the image size from the TLMIN/MAX of the column specified by the rawxcol parameter. Improved error handling if TLMIN/MAX keywords are missing for RAWX/Y or chipcolumns. - mkgisbgd: Fixed problem which caused the background image in the primary to be corrupted when the GIS image bin size was 64x64 (which is different from the default 256x256). The background spectral data in the first extension and other images in the second and third extensions were correct. ****************************************************************************** CALTOOLS ****************************************************************************** - rsp2rmf: now available on Linux (now builds with g77/f90) - genrsp: Corrected bug when reading from a file resolution information for a dispersive instrument. Improved the diagnostic error if the user has given an invalid value for the res_reln parameter. - caldbinfo: Modified to handle Swift/XRT namespace conflict with older XRT instruments. - cmprmf: Modified to update the value of the LO_THRES keyword in the output rmf file. - rbnrmf: Fixed bug which generated a segmentation fault in the case where ebdfile=rmffile. - udcif: Updated to allow users the option of including a file to be indexed in the CALDB even if it seems to be a "duplicate" of another entry in the caldb index file. This is useful since the determination of a duplicate did not previously check for differences in the CBD block, which can be used to distinguish files. ****************************************************************************** CFITSIO ****************************************************************************** CFITSIO 3.001: Major changes have been made to the CFITSIO library in this release to fully support large FITS files which may have size parameters that are larger than 2**31 = 2147483648, i.e., values that are larger than can be represented by a 32-bit signed integer. CFITSIO now supports FITS files that have: - integer FITS keywords with absolute values > 2.1E09 - FITS files with total sizes > 2.1 GB - FITS tables with more than 2.1E09 rows - FITS images with an axis length larger than 2**31 pixels To support this change, the data type of the integer parameters in many of the CFITSIO subroutines has been changed from a 32-bit 'long' to a 64-bit 'LONGLONG'. Fortunately this change is transparent to existing software that only calls the public CFITSIO routines (as defined in the fitsio.h include file) because the C compiler and the cfortran.h macros called by Fortran programs will automatically perform the data type conversion between 32-bit and 64-bit values as necessary. Existing software should run exactly as before without any modification, but to fully take advantage of this new support for large FITS files some applications might need to be modified to use 64-bit integer local variables to store parameters such as the image axes sizes, or table row numbers. There are a number of CFITSIO subroutines which pass the address to an integer parameter which could not be modified to support 64-bit integers without breaking existing software, so in these cases a new subroutine has been added to the CFITSIO library to specifically support 64-bit integer arguments. This backward software compatibility of CFITSIO does NOT apply to any application programs that include the fitsio2.h file and then make calls to some of the privately defined routines inside the CFITSIO library. Some of these internal routines are not compatible with previous versions of the library (especially those routines that now pass a 64-bit integer parameter by reference), so programmers that make use of fitsio2.h should carefully check which routines are called and make appropriate changes to the calling routine if necessary. It is possible (and even likely) that some of these internal CFITSIO routines will continue to change in future releases, so programmers are strongly discouraged from using fitsio2.h or calling any of the undocumented internal routines in CFITSIO. Other significant changes to CFITSIO in this release are: - New functions have been added to the lexical parser (as used by tasks such as fselect and fcalc), including MEDIAN, AVERAGE, STDDEV, ACCUM (accumulative sum), and ANGSEP (compute angular separation). Do 'fhelp calc_express' for more details. - Improved the routines that write 'DATE' keywords to rigorously verify that the input day, month, and year values are valid. ****************************************************************************** FV / POW ****************************************************************************** FV Version 4.2: New features/Bug fixes since V4.1.4 include: Add X axis range selection utility in POW. Add capablity to display 4D table and image (movie). Add capablity to create/display region on image. Add XPA entry points for X axis range selection and region display. Fix one dimension plot/image label problem. Update logic for display CAR projection. Rework background backup directory cleanup logics. Fix ploygon creation problem, allow right mouse button to drag the existing vertex, left mouse button for creation and move the region. Add color changes capability in Edit Region Panel. Change vizier/skyview/catalog file naming scheme. ****************************************************************************** FIMAGE ****************************************************************************** - chimgtyp: modified to handle NANs in input image. - fimgmerge: modified to handle null or NAN values in input image. ****************************************************************************** FUTILS ****************************************************************************** - fpartab: fixed bug in writing values to logical ('L') columns - fdiff: fixed problem with comparison of string and logical table columns. Fixed erroneous reporting of differences when two files have different numbers of extensions. Fixed bug which caused the 'DATE' keyword to not be excluded from the file comparisons. - fverify: fixed to eliminate bogus warnings when verifying floating point FITS images that have been tile-compressed. Modified to accept '-' as the input file name, meaning read file from stdin. Added compile option to force all error messages to go to stdout instead of stderr. Modified to support testing for bytes at the end of LARGE files (>2.1 GB). Modified to print out error if file doesn't exist or is not a FITS file, in the case where prstat=no. ****************************************************************************** HEASARC ****************************************************************************** - Extractor: Filtering Modified the code to interpret filters attached to the event filename to allow multiple ranges (eg filename.evt[GRADE=0:0 2:2]). Added support for region files with sizes given in arcminutes ('), degrees (d), or radians (r). Fixed bug in handling of DSVAL keywords that must be removed when filtering on the column set by the ccol parameter. Cleverer handling of region extensions. Now looks in a region extension to see what coordinates are used. If the current filtering is with a different set of coordinates then a new region extension will be created (and the old ones copied). This fixes a bug which showed up with ASCA GIS data - the standard event files are filtered in detector space and then the user will often follow up by filtering in image space. Trapped NULL values of the TIME column and dealt with them correctly (ie rejected the event). Output Files Added a boolean parameter lctzero. The default is yes which provides the previous behaviour. Setting lctzero=no will cause the times in the lightcurve to be written in spacecraft time units and the keyword TIMEZERO to be set to zero. Added WCSNAMEP keywords for image and WMAP. Removed setting of TIMEREF to 'local' in W_FBLC. This keyword is set to the correct (propagated) value in WSTDKY. Modified the way the EXPOSURE keyword is calculated when the ccol parameter is set if multiple GTI extensions contribute to the output. The old way was to calculate the exposure for each GTI extension and average. This does not work for the UVOT event files where the exposures must be summed. The new version combines individual ranges from all the selected GTI extensions and uses the merged list to calculate an exposure. This does the correct thing for the UVOT case. For missions with multiple CCDs if products are required for spatial regions covering more than one CCD the exposure may be slightly different. However, if the old and new ways give very different exposures then it is not correct to combine data across the CCDs anyway. Propagated the value of the RADECSYS keyword from the event file to the output files. Note that the spectrum file was always being written with RADECSYS='FK4' which was usually wrong but didn't matter. - fovdsp (new in this release): display ISDC format reference catalog and INTEGRAL or Swift field of viewson either Galactic or Equatorial coordinates, aitoff or tangential projections. Also, FITS images may be displayed. - gisxspec (new in this release): Do spectral analysis for gis data. - makeregion (new in this release): Make a region file for an image with POWplot - make2region (new in this release): Create two region files for an image through POWplot. - pspcxspec (new in this release): Perform spectral analysis for PSPC data - selectxrange (new in this release): Make an x range file for an event fits file with POWplot. - spibkg_init: Relative source weighting parameters are now entered as floating point rather than as strings. Some refinement to the background initialization algorithm was also made. In particular, some time-dependent background structures appearing on given detectors are detected and more accurately modeled. ****************************************************************************** HEATOOLS ****************************************************************************** - The new package 'HEAtools' has been distributed in recent Swift software releases and as a beta version, but this marks its first inclusion in a major release of HEASOFT. The HEAtools package represents a "next generation" of FTOOLS, which currently reproduce the functionality of existing FTOOLS, and as such, the HEAtools package is not necessary if you already have FTOOLS. However, having been written entirely in ANSI C for maximum portability, the streamlined HEAtools should also be more stable and provide faster results than their predecessors. For more information, see: http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/lheasoft/ftools/heatools/heatools.html ****************************************************************************** INTEGRAL ****************************************************************************** New package containing: - spibkgsubtrct: produces a background subtracted spectrum resulting from an initial XSPEC analysis of INTEGRAL/SPI data. ** NOTE: in order to compile spibkgsubtrct you must download the Xspec 12 source code in addition to the INTEGRAL package. - varmosaic: carry out mosaic of flux images with weighting of the accompanied variance images. Primarily intended for INTEGRAL ISGRI and JEMX instruments, but may be used for other coded mask instruments. ****************************************************************************** ROSAT ****************************************************************************** - pcexpmap: Fixed an array out of bounds condition which caused a segmentation fault under rare conditions. ****************************************************************************** SWIFT ****************************************************************************** Swift software v 2.0: ------------------ BAT specifc tools ------------------ batbinevt - Correct name of POISSERR keyword in output spectra INTERFACE CHANGE: Allow the user to delete bins with zero counts. Before, the task always deleted these bins, in order to prevent battblocks from crashing. ('delzeroes' parameter) Some warning messages for unlikely user configs. batcelldetect - INTERFACE CHANGE: New parameter 'hduclasses' which allows filtering of input images by HDUCLASn keywords. Now able to read an image without an auxiliary tangent plane coordinate system. Input catalog can have galactic coordinates (if the image is also in galactic coordinates) Output images now have proper HDUCLASn keywords batclean - Can now enter custom background models via the 'bkgmodel' parameter. INTERFACE CHANGE: Can now rebalance the focal plane image before or after cleaning, with various rebalancing options ('balance' and 'balancefirst' parameters). INTERFACE CHANGE: Can now ignore certain sources in the catalog via the 'ignore' parameter. Fixes and simplifications to the way the background model is applied. New CLEANLEV output keyword keeps track of the generation level of cleaning. batdrmgen - INTERFACE CHANGE: A new hidden parameter called "row" has been added that lets the user specify which row of a pha file a response matrix should be made for, in cases where there are multiple spectra in a pha file. The task will search for columns first, then keywords, with the following names: BAT_XOBJ, BAT_YOBJ, BAT_ZOBJ, PCODEFR, NGOODPIX, and MSKWTSQF. Before, it only searched for keywords. INTERFACE CHANGE: A correction function has been added to improve the response to the Crab spectrum. This is mediated by the "fudge" parameter (which until now has been ignored by batdrmgen). (Other changes are pretty transparent to the user, such as using finer binning to improve the response fidelity and changing the model of the passive material transmission to include the Ag and Au edges.) batcovert - INTERFACE CHANGE: Added cubic-residual ADU to energy conversion, with residuals computed by ADU or by corresponding DAC value. 'calmode' parameter options now include INDEF, LINEAR, QUADRATIC, CUBIC, DIRECTCUBIC, or FIXEDDAC. Except when using the LINEAR correction, residfile must be compatible with the calmode selection. FIXEDDAC is the recommended value for normal energy computation. Most users can enter INDEF, and use CALDB for the residfile. LINEAR is provided in order to reproduce the flight software energy calculation. The others are provided primarily for testing. A scaling bug that had a minor effect on results (because gains and offsets have changed very little) was fixed. A bug that prevented use of the rarely-used zeroit option was fixed. batrebin - Added cubic-residual ADU to energy correction, with residuals computed by ADU or by corresponding DAC value. The method is selected by selecting a residfile. Using the current CALDB file will apply the cubic-residual correction at fixed DAC values. Fixed an error that shifted all energy bins by approximately 0.1 keV (0.5 ADU). batfftimage - INTERFACE CHANGE: Now can compute the theoretical variance and significance maps via the 'bkgvarmap' and 'signifmap' parameters. KNOWN BUG: output significance images contain bogus values in the "dead" areas. WORKAROUND for source detection: use 'pcodefile' option of batcelldetect. Output images now have proper HDUCLASn keywords batmasktaglc - INTERFACE CHANGE: A new hidden parameter has been added to "batmasktaglc." The parameter is "scale" which is a floating point value which is used to scale the input raw mask-tagged counts. This is to allow a correction to the input light curve due to any errors in how they are generated. The user must determine the correction factor. batmaskwtevt - Add additional error checking batupdatephakw - NEW with this release ------------------- UVOT specific tools ------------------- uvotdetect - TDISPn keywords modified to report 2 more digits RA,DEC Binning dependent SExtractor configuration files Option to display detected sources uvotimsum - Write RADECSYS and EQUINOX keywords to output image Fixed bug: was not propagating sufficient keywords to output uvotmag - TDISPn keywords modified to report 2 more digits RA,DEC uvotpict - Modified graphical output uvotproduct- NEW with this release uvotscreen - Pass copyall=yes to extractor to retain WINDOW extension Write parameter history to output uvotsource - NEW with this release uvotstarid- TDISPn keywords modified to report 2 more digits RA,DEC Write NULL MAG_DELTA when catalog magnitude is not available Separate parameters to limit position and rotation corrections Index objects loaded from catalog uvottfc- Corrected postage stamp size indicator in output source table ------------------- XRT specific ftools ------------------- xrtcalcpi - Calculate PI dependent on the CCD temperature using a new CALDB 'gain' file format and the XRT science packet header File. New input parameter 'hdfile'. xrtevtrec - Update to read the event and split thresholds from the science packet header which records the on-board settings as a function of temperature. This change is in support of the upcoming FSW. If the event and split thresholds parameters are negative, the event and split values are read from the header file otherwise xrtevtrec uses any input positive value as before. New input parameter 'hdfile'. xrtfilter - Add the columns 'TEN_ARCMIN, SETTLED, ACS_SAA, SAFEHOLD' to the output makefilter file. These are derived from 'FLAGS' of the attitude file. This is to align the makefiler file generated by the xrtpipeline to the one stored in the archive. xrtflagpix - Add the capability to flag event as 'bad' in the Photon Counting mode when the central pixel is below the event threshold. The default threshold is set to 80. New input parameter 'phas1thr', if set to 0 the check on the central pixel is not applied. xrthkproc- Add the capability to use for the source position the detector coordinates. By default the task is run with the detector coordinates of the center of the detector (300,300). New input parameters 'srcdetx','srcdety'. xrthotpix - Add the new input parameter 'usegoodevt' to include/exclude from the search of hot and flickering pixels events set 'bad' by 'xrtflagpix' when the central pixel is below threshold. xrtpcgrade - Update to read the split threshold from the science packet header which records the on-board settings as a function of temperature. This change is in support of the upcoming FSW. If the split threshold parameter is negative, the split threshold value is read from the header file otherwise xrtpcgrade uses any input positive value as before. New input parameter 'hdfile'. xrtpipeline - New input parameter 'obsmode' to process ALL obs_modes or only the one selected. This allows to specify different user input screening selection for the different observing modes. 'obsmode' values are (ALL,POINTING, SLEW, SETTLING). The "ROTIME" column is now maintained in the Lev 1a file for the Timing modes to allow the calculation of the LLD and SPLIT temperature dependent parameters. The "ROTIME" is now deleted in the Lev 2 files. The parameter 'pilow' is set to 30 in the xrtproducts call. New input parameter 'usesrcdethkproc' to allow users to process the header science packet file (xrthkproc task) using detector or sky coordinates. New input parameter 'evtfromarc' to allow to get input event files from the archive or from the users output directory. This is to allow users to apply only data screening or products generation (stage 2 and/or stage 3 of the pipeline) to the Calibrated Level 1 event files in the archive. New input parameter 'createmkffile' to enable/disable the generation of the Filter file ('.mfk' file). If the 'createmkffile' is set to 'no' the pipeline uses the Filter file taken from the archive. xrtproducts- Changed image plot energy band to 0.5-10keV (PI=50-1000) Replaced xspec call with xspec11 Added check on 'ra' and 'dec' input parameters if the input 'regionfile' is not set to 'default'. xrtscreen - Read a new format for the CALDB file where now the good values of the hk parameter are listed together with syntax to use in the screening expression. Add a new input parameter 'obsmodescreen'. If the parameter is set to yes (default) add to the GTI expression, the parameters that specify the observing mode (i.e.: "SETTLED==0&&TEN_ARCMIN==0" for data taken during slew, "SETTLED==0&&TEN_ARCMIN==1" for data taken in 10 arcmin from the source, "SETTLED==1" for data in pointing). These parameters are not added to the expression when generating GTI for the Image mode. xrttam - The extension ACS_DATA from the input attitude files is appended to the TAM corrected attitude output of xrttam. This extension is used by xrtfilter. xrttimetag - Add the capability to use for the source position the detector coordinates to time tag the events. The default processing uses the source sky coordinates. New input parameters 'srcdetx','srcdety', 'usesrcdet'. ------------------ Swift General tool ------------------ swiftxform - MJDREFI was mis-spelled causing a warning about missing MJDREF keywords Support attfile=CONST:* ------------------------------------------- BAT known Issues on the analysis software ------------------------------------------- - batfftimage and batmaskwtimg: incorrect derived attitude Task: Imaging tasks (batfftimage and batmaskwtimg) Version: All versions What Builds: All builds Problem: Attitude may be incorrect for observation with many snapshots Status: Open Two imaging tasks assume that the spacecraft attitude is fixed during an observation: batfftimage (to make sky images) and batmaskwtimg (to make mask weighting maps for flux extraction). Both tasks take the attitude at the '''MIDPOINT''' of the observation start/stop times. If there are gaps in the observation, i.e. multiple snapshots, then it is possible, even likely, that the midpoint time will fall within a gap. When this happens, the attitude may be erroneously interpolated. There are two workaround solutions, * analyze one snapshot at a time. Or; * use the 'aspect' tool to generate a revised attitude file. As of Swift 1.2, 'aspect' can create a new attitude file based on the median pointing direction during the observation good times only. You will also need to supply a good time interval extension to 'aspect', which should be available in the detector or sky images. In the future the BAT team will investigate how feasible it is to incorporate 'aspect'-like functionality into the BAT imaging tools. - Analysis: Earth and Moon Occultation Task: Flux extraction tasks (batmaskwtevt,batmaskwtimg,batfftimage) Version: All versions What Builds: All builds Problem: Earth and moon may block parts of the BAT field of view Status: Open The BAT field of view is large, approximately 120 x 60 degrees fully coded. The current spacecraft constraint excludes the sun with a 45 deg constraint cone, and the earth limb and moon with 30 degree constraints each. Even so, the Earth and Moon may enter the BAT field of view. This will most commonly occur at edges of the "long" BAT axis (i.e. large IMX in the image plane). The effect will be to occult the flux of sources in that part of the sky. Since the Moon and (primarily) the Earth move as a function of time, the blockage may have the effect of '''reducing,''' but not totally eliminating the source on-time. Example: in a 2000 second image, Sco X-1 might be blocked during the final 50 seconds. Users need to take special care regarding occultations, especially by the Earth. Tools are in process to make this job easier. These will involve image corrections for full images, and good time interval filters, for time selection of non-occulted data. - Mask tagged light curve systematic flux errors Task: batmasktaglc Version: All (bug is in BAT flight software) What Builds: All Problem: There are systematic flux errors in mask tagged light curves Status: Open Discussion: BAT mask tagged light curves are generated on board by the BAT flight software. The on-board process involves generating a mask weight map via ray tracing (similar to the ground task batmaskwtimg). On the ground, the raw light curves require further processing before they are scientifically meaningful. The "mask tagging" process requires that the source position be known in advance, in instrument coordinates. This transformation requires knowledge of the spacecraft attitude, the instrument-to-spacecraft alignment, and the source celestial coordinates. A bug has been found in the BAT flight software which makes the incorrect transformation. The ray-traced position used for generating the mask weight map is several arcminutes off of the true position. The point spread function is thus sampled significantly off-peak; this irretrievably reduces the signal to noise of the mask weighted light curve fluxes. Also, the flux itself is underreported compared to its true value. Ground software fixes are being investigated that would correct the flux to a truer value (although with larger error bars). A long term solution to fix the flight software is also being investigated, but may not be feasible. ****************************************************************************** TIME ****************************************************************************** - maketime: Implemented new prefr/postfr scheme: new filter files created by makefilter (or newmakefilter) need prefr=0.0 and postfr=1.0, and should have the PREFR & POSTFR keywords set. If the PREFR/POSTFR keywords are not found, the standard value of 0.5 is used for each (for e.g. older missions). The user may override either of these choices by entering prefr/postfr values on the command line. ****************************************************************************** XIMAGE ****************************************************************************** XIMAGE VERSION 4.3 For full documentation on XIMAGE, refer to: http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xanadu/ximage/ * Better handling of images with no sky coordinates * Improved GTI merging capability * New command uplimit, which calculates an upper limit * New options + ccorr -> symlwidth - Specify symbol's line width for guide source markers + read_image -> gtiext - Specify extension to read GTI from event file + wcs -> frameid - Switch between image coordinate frames For complete change history of XIMAGE see: http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xanadu/ximage/ximrelease.html ****************************************************************************** XRONOS ****************************************************************************** - earth2sun: Fixed uninitialized variable that resulted in incorrect results on Darwin (Mac OS X). - rbf2fits: compiles with g77 & f90 now. ****************************************************************************** XSELECT ****************************************************************************** Added offset switch option to extract curve. Offset=no now creates a lightcurve whose times are given in spacecraft units. This differs from the default which writes out times relative to the start bin. Added filter column option which allows filtering on event attributes which are included in columns in the event file. At the moment allows filters of the form "NAME=val:val val:val..." because these are handled by the extractor key filtering. Note that this filter can be used on Astro-E2 XRS data to get events from subsets of pixels. Replaced getting MJDREF from the MDB by reading MJDREF[F/I] and TIMESYS from the event file. These are used when time filtering based on UTC or MJD ranges. Now includes conversion from UTC to TT if TIMESYS='TT'. Allowed "select expref" as an alias for "select chip". Updates to MDB for Swift, Integral, and Astro-E2 XRS. ****************************************************************************** XSPEC ****************************************************************************** *** Note that this release includes both xspec v12 (invoked with "xspec") and xspec v11.3.2 (invoked with "xspec11"). xspec v12 is not currently supported on the OSF/alpha or Cygwin platforms, so for those platforms only, invoking "xspec" will call xspec11. ************** XSPEC v12.2.0: ************** Xspec v12 is a major revision from v11. The core of the program is now primarily written in double precision ANSI C++ instead of single precision Fortran77 and its internal design, layout, and data structures, have been reorganized into an object-oriented framework using design patterns and generic programming techniques made available with C++. Most of the xspec models library however has been retained in its original Fortran77 code. Some of the enhancements, in particular the use of multiple models described below, require corresponding changes in command-line syntax. However, with few exceptions the program remains fully backward-compatible with xspec v11, and previously existing user scripts are expected to run in v12 with little or no modification. However, compatibility issues are possible with this initial release, and we welcome any user reports to help us correct these and other bugs. Key modifications: The implementation of user models has been rewritten to allow users to write models not only calculated in single precision Fortran77, but double precision Fortran77, C, and C++. Further, XSPEC can now be used as a development environment for user models by allowing recompilation and plotting from the XSPEC command prompt. A spectrum can be fit with the sum of separate models each having its own response matrix. This feature is useful for analyzing data from coded aperture masks. A new internal dynamic expression implementation allows more complex (multiply-nested) models, and also allows parameter links to be polynomial functions of one or more parameters. A ctrl-c breaking mechanism has been implemented to allow early exit from the more time-intensive tasks such as fitting and error calculations. An "undo" command has also been added to return the program to the state before its most recent command was issued. The CERN Minuit/migrad algorithm has been better integrated into the code and its documentation is now directly accessible to the user during XSPEC sessions.Type II (multi-spectrum) OGIP files are now fully supported. Multiple ranges can be selected in the data command, and support is present for Type II background and arf files. Observation simulations (the fakeit command) now operate on Type II inputs. The online documentation scheme is now implemented using pdf files, replacing the older VMS-style help system. The help scheme can be configured to use external applications such as Adobe Acrobat or the xpdf readers. Users can document their own local models and tcl-scripted procedures in pdf files and add them to the help system. For a more complete list of modifications, enhancements, and descriptions, please refer to the xspec12 manual. ************** XSPEC v11.3.2: ************** This is mainly a bug-fix update of 11.3.1 with the addition of three new models. We are continuing to distribute v11 to aide comparisons with the new v12 however all future development work will occur on v12. We will however attempt to supply fixes for any serious bugs that show up in v11. Changes to commands "tclout simpars" returns a list of simulated parameter values for the model in use (based on the covariance matrix at the end of the last fit). Changes to models All the models that use the mekal code (eg mkcflow) can be made to use the APEC code by setting the switch parameter to 2. The APEC versions of NEI models are modified by the APECTHERMAL and APECVELOCITY variables in the same way as the standard APEC models. Models added compbb - Comptonization model of Poutanen and Svenson. ezdiskbb - Replacement for diskbb with a zero-torque inner boundary condition (Zimmerman, Narayan & McClintock). kerrbb - Multi-temperature blackbody for thin accretion disk around a Kerr black hole (Li et al. 2005). zredden - Redshifted version of redden. ****************************************************************************** XSTAR ****************************************************************************** Xstar Version 2.1kn3 (April 2005): - Two bugs were found in version 2.1k in the implementation of the Voigt function when calculating line absorption and the calculation of line broadening: The Voigt function bug affected primarily lines with small damping parameters, and resulted in non-fatal numerical errors in the xstar output absorption spectrum (INFs). When xstar was called as part of xstar2xspec this resulted in fatal errors because the cfitsio routines which read the xstar output could not interpret the INFs. The line broadening bug resulted in too large absorption line depths when turbulent broadening was important. Neither of these bugs affected the temperature, ionization balance or emission spectrum. The bugs have been repaired in version 2.1kn3. Version 2.1kn3 also has an added feature, which is the addition of ion-by-ion heating and cooling rates as extensions to the output file xout_abund1.fits. Also added is the capability to set the value of niter to a negative number, which allows the solution of charge conservation without solving thermal equilibrium. As before, if niter=0 then neither charge conservation nor thermal equlibrium is calculated. ****************************************************************************** MISC ****************************************************************************** - A final note about libraries - new in this release (relative to HEASOFT 5.3.1) are: atFunctions 2.3 readline 4.3 SLALIB version 2.4-13 (contained in xanlib) HEASoft / FTOOLS Help Desk If FTOOLS has been useful in your research, please reference this site (https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/ftools) and use the ASCL reference for HEASoft [ascl:1408.004] or the ASCL reference for the original FTOOLs paper [ascl:9912.002]: Blackburn, J. K. 1995, in ASP Conf. Ser., Vol. 77, Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems IV, ed. R. A. Shaw, H. E. Payne, and J. J. E. Hayes (San Francisco: ASP), 367. Web page maintained by: Bryan K. Irby HEASARC Home | Observatories | Archive | Calibration | Software | Tools | Students/Teachers/Public Last modified: Tuesday, 12-Oct-2021 12:48:48 EDT HEASARC Staff Scientist Position - Applications are now being accepted for a Staff Scientist with significant experience and interest in the technical aspects of astrophysics research, to work in the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, MD. Refer to the AAS Job register for full details. |